German law has long been strongly committed to informational privacy, with protection to be found at the constitutional and statutory levels.

Legislation over the last two decades has expanded the ability of the government, including the police and intelligence agencies, to process, store, and share personal information.

The leading examples from this study of systematic data access in Germany concern; the leading examples from this study concern ‘strategic searches’ by intelligence agencies, data mining by the police, the structured statutory system for access to the contents of the ‘Anti-Terror File’, and the police's ‘radio-cell inquiries’ pursuant to the Code of Criminal Procedure, section 100g.

German unease with systematic data access is shown by current controversies with data retention, a new federal bill for ‘residence reporting’, the abandonment of the ELENA process, and the proposal for a ‘Bundes-Cloud’ that is intended to keep German personal data out of the datacentres of US corporations.